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Scripting the Vim editor, Part 4: Dictionaries

"A dictionary is a container data structure that offers
different optimizations and trade-offs from a list. In particular,
in a dictionary the order of the elements stored is irrelevant and
the identity of each element is explicit. In this fourth article in
a series introducing Vimscript, Damian Conway introduces you to
dictionaries, including an overview of their basic syntax and many
functions. He concludes with several examples that illustrate the
use of dictionaries for more efficient data processing and cleaner
code.

"A dictionary in Vimscript is essentially the same as an AWK
associative array, a Perl hash, or a Python dictionary. That is,
it's an unordered container, indexed by strings rather than
integers.

"This fourth article in a series on Vimscript introduces this
important data structure and explains its various functions for
copying, filtering, extending, and pruning. The examples focus on
the differences between lists and dictionaries, and on those cases
where the use of a dictionary is a better alternative to the
list-based solutions developed in Part 3 on built-in lists."